Wealth, Freedom & Options With Joshua Belanger

Earlier today I noticed a large option trade hit the tape in the Financial ETF (XLF). The trade was a block of 18,430 August $24 puts bought to open for 20 cents. The total volume was 24,090 contracts at that strike vs. an open interest of 6,363 contracts. Now, I don't pay too much attention to large contracts traded in ETF's because there's not much edge because ETF's are used for a lot of hedging. However, I wanted to point out a few reasons why this could at least be a short term directional trade. The XLF was down .79% compared to the SPX .29% today. A few names in that ETF were down even more like Bank of America closing down 2.50%. The XLF weekly options that expire on Friday are in backwardation. What that means is that the market is pricing in elevated short-term risk, which I'm not sure why. The current implied volatility percentile is on the low end of the range at 7%. Which means selling options here is not advantageous. That doesn't mean buying option premium is a layup either because y